I have been using the Eagle PCB for quite some time now for my PCB designs. It is very easy to use and there are many libraries and projects that can be downloaded on the internet. But due to some changes on eagle that made recently, I decided to switch and look for better alternative. Upon searching, I found this software called Kicad. It seems promising, feature packed and best of all its free!
Yes you can still get the Eagle PCB software for free but you are only limited to 8cm x 10cm 2-layer PCB max. The changes that I hate the most on eagle is that you need to log in every time you open the software and the license type is now subscription, meaning you need to pay monthly or yearly for the license. This is OK for company that make use of eagle for their product but not for a freelancer and hobbyist like me who seldom use it. So here are the points for this post:
Ease of Use
Without a doubt! Eagle won this one! I have used eagle for the first time without reading manuals! When I tried Kicad, there are too many questions that came out of my mind and I can’t find answers until I watched a video tutorials. Or maybe its just me who got used to eagle PCB. They are very different software although they are for the same purpose, the implementation is quite different. For example in eagle, you will manually choose the part number and package for each component. In Kicad you will only assign the packages of components when you are done with the schematics. That was the big thing that confused me when I first use Kicad.
Features
The biggest thing that convinced me to go for Kicad is the built-in 3d viewer. It is a big help to view your designs in 3d, not only to visualize you design but there are also errors that are obvious when viewing in 3d. I usually view my design using an online 3d gerber viewer, it only renders the PCB in 3d not including the components. The built-in 3d viewer of Kicad lets you view both PCB and components in 3D.
My first project using kicad. 🙂
The best thing about eagle is that it has lots of libraries and projects that can be downloaded online. It is also easy to use. That’s it! While Kicad on the other hand has more features without limitations and best of all its free!